Taiwan - A Health Nut's Nightmare: 九份老街

A week on and from the beach last Sunday, this Sunday brings me to 九份老街. I don't recall being here on my previous few visits, Minghui & Mr Pang please remind me if we have been here?

I was told they have great teahouses here

with fantastic scenary, but being a tourist attraction, I took the news with a pinch of salt. *I do look like a tourist in the photo anyway*
An abundance of souvenier shops, not a good sign for a worthy traveller. But where there's people, there's food. And it was food we found indeed.

銅鑼燒! or otherwise known as Doreamon Food. One of my favourite foods. And guess what, they serve it with ice-cream here! Seems like a tourist-driven food

evolution but hey, I'm not complaining. There's strawberry, mint, chocolate, yam, vanilla and peanut. Loh Man Bro chose the conventional chocolate, and it's always strawberry ice cream for me.

The 銅鑼燒 was

soft, fluffy and warm. Makes for nice dynamics with the cold ice cream. Can't do much wrong here.

The other must-have here for tour

ists ,i mean us, was the traditional yam-balls. But again, development dictates change. They now have sweet potato, seaseme, peanut. It's like muah chee. At least it was heartening to see them traditionally hand-made at this 老招牌. I'd have been disappointed if there was a machine churning out the yam balls. 賴阿婆芋圓 (NTD40) for a ice-cold bowl of hand-made muah chee. I had yam, sweet potato. QQ and refreshing. Not too shabby.

We have here the kid that wanted to put RayBans out of business (refer to kid's comment on previous post on a Beachy Sunday) Ultra intelligent kid, hyperactive and superbly cute. This is the family that is "hosting" me in Taipei currently, they're our Taipei distributors. Huang Zhou's a physiotherapist and his wife is a nurse. I'm learning all sorts of medical stuff from him now.

Top of the hill now, or nearly at the top. Teahouses aplenty. Pick one with a view we did. Spongebob Lolly in hand *the kid I mean, name's Kaijie or BeeBee as he is affected affectionately by his parents*, we settled for a place with a million dollar view. Tea-session conducted expertly by an old hand Mr Man Bro, we chatted heartily.

*fast forward 2hrs* Tea does help aid digestion, and yes you guessed it, more room for food.

Grilled Abalone Mushrooms

anyone? (NTD70) The auntie selling it proclaims "不好吃退錢!楊郭最喜歡吃的!" and she turns the sizzling mushrooms on the grill. What's the Condor Heroes character got to do with these mushrooms anyway? I must've missed that part of the story.

Impressively sized aren't they?